Words From The Master - 30 March 2008

Sins and Guilt

We are never punished for our sins; we are punished by them.

People believe that sins are punished after a time, since the wheels of God grind surely but slowly. They are therefore not overly concerned about immediate repercussions. You never know: God may forget, He may have other more important things to do, and if He does remember I can always bribe Him to let me off. Sad to say, many sins attract immediate punishment; though the punishment may not seem either tangible or connected.

When we are angry or jealous we are committing a sin against our own nature and our Being. Our inner state turns awry, our peace is ruined. Even a few minutes of a negative emotion such as anger poisons our entire system, and we can take days to recover to normalcy. This is our sin and its punishment.

Guilt is often the punishment we inflict upon ourselves for our sins. Even for petty sins, we carry our guilt a long time. When we drop the guilt we drop the sin as well. A person committing what may be socially termed unacceptable with no feeling of guilt is not a sinner, nor suffers punishment.

People worry constantly about Heaven and Hell and ask me again and again whether they will go to Hell because of what they did. Heaven and Hell are what we create in our mind. Worry and guilt lead us into Hell. It is religions that tend to control through fear of hell in a world that we are yet to reach. All you to fear is the hell in this life as a consequence of your actions and not hell in another life or after this life.

Confessing to a sin as a ritual without any real sense of regret and feeling cleansed quite often makes one ready to repeat it with greater fervor. Doing this only enhances the coffers of religious institutions, does not in any way enhance your spiritual status. To redress a sin one must cleanse one’s own self internally, truly regret the sin and be aware not to repeat it.

Two Zen monks were on a long journey to a distant monastery. On the way they came to a river in spate. As they rolled up their robes and readied themselves to wade through the floods, a young woman approached them and asked for help to cross the river. The older of the two monks lifted her in his arms without hesitation and carried her safely across the river. The monks carried on with their journey and reached the monastery by nightfall. As they were about to sleep, the younger monk asked the older: How could you do such a thing? We monks are not allowed to look at a woman, let alone touch and carry her. You are a sinner.

Responded the older and wiser one calmly: I put her down hours ago. Why are you still carrying her in your mind? Let her go.

For those of us not as wise, guilt is good in a limited way. Guilt helps us to stay away from the mistake a second time. We are rarely intelligent enough to learn mistakes to commit each time, so we just keep repeating old mistakes. Once we learn the lesson from our past mistake and determine not to repeat it, we should drop the guilt. Worrying constantly about past mistakes that you have truly regretted only creates problems. There is no greater sin than refusing to let go of one’s past.